A Kitchen Design Idea you May not Have Considered

August 30, 2008

Seeking modern kitchen flooring? You’ve probably considered vinyl and other common kitchen flooring, but what about something more unusual? Think bamboo and cork. Yes! Bamboo and cork! It’s not as strange as you think!

Perhaps the Best Kitchen Flooring Material Mom Never Told You About - Cork

Soft yet Durable

Walking on cork is almost like walking on air, giving you an almost relaxing experience when you walk in your kitchen. And don’t worry about dropped dishes. Soft under foot also means soft under dish, limiting your broken dishes if you happen to drop one every now and then. But cork also retains its original shape, meaning you can safely place furniture on it without fear of denting.

It Won’t Clash With Your Kitchen

Black, green and red are just a few of the colors that your cork flooring can come in, so you can, if you want, coordinate it with your existing kitchen colors.

Environmentally Friendly

Because cork comes from tree bark, and not the tree’s base wood, cork isn’t harmful to the environment. So when you get cork kitchen flooring, you aren’t contributing to deforestation.

A Quiet House?

Because cork takes in sound waves, it will help prevent noise from travelling in your house, meaning a rambunctious family activity won’t spread to the rest of the home – at least not by sound waves.

Thinking New Kitchen Flooring? Think Bamboo

Another Environmentally Conscious Floor Choice

Bamboo is actually not tree wood. Rather, it’s a grass. Thus, it’s harvested in only 2 years, rather than in the 50 to 100 years it takes for a tree to mature, limiting its impact on the environment as reforestation occurs quickly.

Natural Beauty in Your Kitchen

Bamboo has the color of really light beer, imparting a gold-like/yellowish glow to your kitchen. The result will be a slightly rustic, yet warm look for your kitchen floor.However, the coloring may clash with your existing kitchen colors, so make sure you are comfortable with the color contrast that bamboo would bring to your kitchen before purchase. Further, you can choose the grains in your bamboo flooring to run either horizontally or vertically along the plank, which is the building block that bamboo flooring usually comes in.

A Solid Addition to Your Kitchen

Bamboo might look weak in the wild, leading you to believe it wouldn’t make a durable addition to your kitchen. However, believe it or not, bamboo is really stronger than oak. Consequently, it can withstand the constant pounding a high traffic kitchen is subjected to as well as easily support heavy furniture and appliances.

Should You Consider Bamboo and Cork?

So if you want practical yet unique kitchen flooring, consider cork and bamboo. They each run about $5 per square foot, putting it slightly on the expensive side. But if you don’t mind the extra expense, you could have a unique kitchen you could be proud of.

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